Today, business and administrative processes no longer take place solely within one organization, which is to say within one company or one government agency for example, but rather across organizational boundaries, indeed, often across multiple organizational boundaries, so that at least some of the individual process participants who are responsible for carrying out the individual process steps also belong to different organizations.
Most private and public organizations today employ electronic communication systems and data processing systems for carrying out their business or administrative processes. In addition, process control systems such as so-called workflow management systems (WFMS) are already in use today in some organizations for automating business and administrative processes.
However, it is only rarely the case that all organizations or process participants involved in a business or administrative process, hereinafter also simply called process for short, use the same communication systems, data processing systems, and/or process control systems. It is far more likely that several process participants or participating organizations all work with different systems.
Particularly the data processing and process control systems, which are often tailored to specific requirements, or are even specially developed for them, and whose “influence” generally extends only to the borders of a particular organization, tend to have an insular character. This means that they do not, or at least do not easily, support data exchange, especially automated data exchange, with the various systems of other process participants.
Moreover, it is by no means the case that every organization possesses a process control system. Nor would the procurement of such a system be economically feasible, especially when processes are executed in small numbers or quantities.
Consequently, process-oriented data exchange between multiple process participants belonging to different organizations, and comprehensive monitoring and control of such processes, pose significant problems.